Culture Doctor. Leadership Catalyst. Executive Strategist.

Dr. Marni Gauthier works with exceptional individuals, devoted change agents and thought leaders in Fortune 500 firms and high-growth stage companies. With clients ranging from energy to education, technology, finance, and healthcare, her fluency spans industries and sectors. Marni has also served as faculty for the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado and the CU Leadership Studies Minor.

Marni helps her clients grow their leadership capacity to maximize their influence and impact. She partners with executives to operationalize the mindset and practices that generate continuous improvement. An expert learning architect and master facilitator, leadership catalyst and coach, Marni empowers leaders to realize their vision by cultivating the conditions that allow creativity and innovation to flourish.

Background

Dr. Gauthier founded Four Site Leadership™ in 2012 by drawing on several paradigms of four in the natural and human worlds, to create a holistic approach to leadership development. In addition to her PhD, Marni is certified in and has trained multiple teams in the following internationally renown courses:

Crucial Conversations®

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Establishing Collaborative Partnerships

DecisionStyles

Effective Communication

Relationship Management

Together with delivering these many trainings, Marni has also design-delivered:

Emotional Intelligence

Trust

Personal Mastery

Four Site Leadership

Prior to Four Site, Marni was a tenured SUNY professor, wherein she identified cultural systems that shape art, politics, individual and world views. Her first book identified a new literary movement—beyond postmodernism—as a distinct phenomenon of recent global and national history.

Her maturation in the State University of New York (SUNY) system, from junior to senior faculty, chair of several committees, and cultural studies scholar-teacher gave her an expertise and keen insight into organizational culture. As exceptional systems-thinker, Marni sees rationally, intuitively, and relationally, to quickly apprehend workplace dynamics.

Marni’s 20+ years of leadership experience began with her nomination to Lead Graduate Teacher at University of Colorado, Boulder. She implemented interdisciplinary training that included program development, teaching consultation, learning styles, assessment and evaluation procedures.

Marni earned her BA from Boston University, MA from SUNY Buffalo, and PhD from the University of Colorado. As a SUNY professor from 2002 – 2012, she helped create a five-year strategic plan, led a comprehensive program revision, and managed successful faculty searches that integrated three distinct department tracks. She addressed conflict, created a climate of trust and respect, and mentored new faculty. She was granted tenure by unanimous vote in 2009.

In 2010, the CEO of a global consulting firm invited and sponsored Marni in their signature nine-month leadership intensive. She joined a cadre of Fortune 500 high potentials on three continents, and, in 2011, was certified at the highest level, “Mastery.” From there, she went on to train executive teams how to hold Crucial Conversations and establish collaborative partnerships, become a certified professional coach, and continued mentorship with top leadership consultants.

Based on a holistic leadership paradigm and approaching life and work as a creative force, Marni founded Four Site Leadership in 2012. She customizes solutions to pain points and goals, and helps build organizational health and long-term sustainability.

In addition to her consultant role in several leadership and organizational development initiatives, Marni taught “Business Applications of Social Responsibility” at the CU Leeds School of Business, and “Becoming a Leader” for the CU Leadership Studies Minor, in 2015-2016.

As a Transformation Advisor at CA Technologies, Marni advised the CTO and executive leadership as to the cultural transformation of CA. She identified systemic patterns, conducted root cause analysis, built key relationships, and fostered cross-team collaboration. Her 2017 LinkedIn article, “Agile for the Rest of Us: Transformational Leadership and the Road to Agility,” describes this experience and conveys her strategic-relational approach.

Background

Dr. Gauthier founded Four Site Leadership in 2012 by drawing on several paradigms of four in the natural and human worlds, to create a holistic approach to leadership development. In addition to her PhD, Marni is certified in and has trained multiple teams in the following internationally renown courses:

Crucial Conversations

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

iLoveFeedback®

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team*

Establishing Collaborative Partnerships

Effective Communication

Relationship Management

Together with delivering these many trainings, Marni has also design-delivered:

DecisionStyles

Emotional Intelligence

Trust

Personal Mastery

Four Site Leadership: How to Approach the Four Leader Archetypes to Better Your Leadership

Prior to Four Site, Marni was a tenured SUNY professor, wherein she identified cultural systems that shape art, politics, individual and world views. Her first book identified a new literary movement—beyond postmodernism—as a distinct phenomenon of recent global and national history.

Her maturation in the State University of New York (SUNY) system, from junior to senior faculty, chair of several committees, and cultural studies scholar-teacher gave her an expertise and keen insight into organizational culture. As exceptional systems-thinker, Marni sees rationally, intuitively, and relationally, to quickly apprehend workplace dynamics.

Marni’s 20+ years of leadership experience began with her nomination to Lead Graduate Teacher at University of Colorado, Boulder. She implemented interdisciplinary training that included program development, teaching consultation, learning styles, assessment and evaluation procedures.

Marni earned her BA from Boston University, MA from SUNY Buffalo, and PhD from the University of Colorado. As a SUNY professor from 2002 – 2012, she helped create a five-year strategic plan, led a comprehensive program revision, and managed successful faculty searches that integrated three distinct department tracks. She addressed conflict, created a climate of trust and respect, and mentored new faculty. She was granted tenure by unanimous vote in 2009.

In 2010, the CEO of a global consulting firm invited and sponsored Marni in their signature nine-month leadership intensive. She joined a cadre of Fortune 500 high potentials on three continents, and, in 2011, was certified at the highest level, “Mastery.” From there, she went on to train executive teams how to hold Crucial Conversations and establish collaborative partnerships, become a certified professional coach, and continued mentorship with top leadership consultants.

Based on a holistic leadership paradigm and approaching life and work as a creative force, Marni founded Four Site Leadership in 2012. She customizes solutions to pain points and goals, and helps build organizational health and long-term sustainability.

In addition to her consultant role in several leadership and organizational development initiatives, Marni taught “Business Applications of Social Responsibility” at the CU Leeds School of Business, and “Becoming a Leader” for the CU Leadership Studies Minor, in 2015-2016.

As a Transformation Advisor at CA Technologies, Marni advised the CTO and executive leadership as to the cultural transformation of CA. She identified systemic patterns, conducted root cause analysis, built key relationships, and fostered cross-team collaboration. Her 2017 LinkedIn article, “Agile for the Rest of Us: Transformational Leadership and the Road to Agility,” describes this experience and conveys her strategic-relational approach.

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I am in the business of transformation for a simple reason: business drives the levers of the world, and it’s business that’s creating the solutions we need for a truly sustainable future on which multiple stakeholders depend.

When leaders learn to be proactive, intentional, and nimbly responsive, it’s not just profits and cultures that change: it’s their lives and the lives of everyone around them. When leaders moves from being transactional to transformational, it impacts and exponentially expands their sphere of influence: from employees, colleagues, co-founders and investors, to customers and their relationships at home and in their communities.

The research is clear: today’s leaders need a self-awareness that takes them deeper than a new skill set, business strategy, or willingness to work hard. A holistic and systems approach enables leaders to transform challenges into growth opportunities that radiate through the entire organization and translate to real, lasting, and increasing ROI.

My evolution as a SUNY faculty member was instrumental to my current understanding of systems, leadership and communication styles. With an eye on organizational dynamics in academia and the corporate world, I learned the lineage of ancient cross-cultural leader archetypes to current assessments — from the MBTI and DiSC personality profiles to corporate 360s.

I began the transition from academia to leadership development in 2010, first by learning Personal Mastery — the core of Peter Senge’s Five Disciplines that create a learning organization. In May 2010, the CEO of Conversant, a global leadership firm, sponsored my joining a 15-member cadre of high potentials in their signature leadership intensive, “Credibility, Influence and Impact.” At its conclusion in 2011, I was certified at the level of “Mastery.”

In 2012, I heeded a call to work more holistically with experienced leaders at the edge of purpose and growth, and formed Four Site Leadership. My work in conversation as an iterative system of value came full circle in 2016-17 when, as a Transformation Advisor for a multinational IT firm, I became a fluent systems agilist.

From observation of teams who consistently created value through innovation, and derived from agile software methodologies, these recurrent cycles of success depend on alignment and applied learning, together with action.

An agile organization is one of continuous improvement, powered by a growth mindset. It requires transparency, systems thinking and collaboration—none of which can occur in the absence of trust or fluent, skilled communication.

Mindset, moreover, is the least understood and most relevant dimension of agile needed to scale, both in and outside of IT — to nimbly adapt in a competitive, ever-changing and high-speed marketplace. Hence, my work revolved on advising the CTO and senior leadership as to the cultural transformation of the company.

I teach clients how to grow, how to learn the lessons that life is offering (or foisting upon you). How to gain what you need when you need it — and the courage and wisdom to step through to the next thing. This is the Art of Transformation: How to turn a pivot, transition, crisis or opportunity into Your Next Evolution.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.